In recent years, communication environments such as the Internet have been well developed even for households. While broadcasts excel in simultaneous reporting, communications excel in transmitting individual information. Using such characteristics of broadcasts and communications, delivery systems such as Hybridcast (registered trademark), which integrates content acquired from broadcasts and from communications to allow provision of high-value added content, have been developed.
In such a delivery system as Hybridcast, a display terminal such as a television receiver acquires content based on broadcast signals and acquire content by communications accessing to a server via a communication line such as the Internet. The display terminal can then combine and display the content based on broadcast signals (hereinafter referred to as broadcast content) and the content acquired by communications.
Furthermore, a user can use a plurality of display terminals to display thereon a plurality of pieces of related content.
When the respective display terminals display different content from each other and the content displayed has relevance to each other, it is desirable to synchronize the timing of the display. Accordingly, several technologies have been developed to synchronize among a plurality of display terminals.
In the conventional technologies, video data is synchronized among a plurality of terminals according to time information simultaneously transmitted from a server. To synchronize web content and the like among the terminals, it is necessary to acquire time information from a server successively and continuously, whereby burdens on the terminals, the server, and transmission paths are increased.
In view of the foregoing, the present invention provides a content processing apparatus and a content synchronizing method that reduce the burdens of synchronizing content among a plurality of terminals.